


not a day too soon

by invaderssayni



Series: it's been a long, hot summer [3]
Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:49:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1437280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invaderssayni/pseuds/invaderssayni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unless the perfect suit presents itself in the next hour, Jay Gatsby is going to move to Canada and start a new life as a lumberjack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not a day too soon

Jay Gatsby is staring at the remains of his closet while contemplating how he would look with a beard, because unless the perfect suit presents itself in the next hour, he is going to move to Canada and start a new life as a lumberjack.  
He has spent the past week planning tonight, you see. It had seemed only fitting to Jay that the event which will irrevocably change his friendship with Nick Carraway should happen in more or less the same setting as their first conversation. That being the case, he has invited Nick to join him at the party he is hosting tonight, and Nick has accepted.  
(Although his relationship with Daisy ended rather spectacularly last week — which he readily admits was his own fault — he has decided to continue having parties, albeit in a somewhat less over-the-top fashion. He quite enjoys them, truth be told, and at any rate Meyer Wolfsheim thinks they’re good for business.)  
In his mind, he has been imagining himself as calm, cool, and collected while he waits casually in his library for Nick to arrive. This won’t happen until after sunset, of course, and Nick will likely want a drink once he arrives; he usually does at these parties, which Jay is counting on. He will wait until Nick has had at least two drinks, at which point Jay will invite him up to the library. He will tell him everything that has been on his mind for the past few weeks, and he will hope that his suspicions about Nick are correct. His plans for the remainder of the evening are rather more flexible, although he won’t deny certain possibilities are far more appealing than others.  
But none of that can happen, of course, if he can’t manage to find something to wear aside from his dressing gown.  
(A part of him points out that, for certain parts of the evening, being in a state of undress may prove quite useful. He politely reminds that part that he is thirty-two years old, thank you very much, and he would like to think his seduction skills are more sophisticated than that.)  
“Mr. Gatsby, sir, Chicago on the line,” his butler calls from the lower floor of his bedroom.  
He hadn’t even heard the phone ring. “Tell them I’ll call tomorrow,” he snaps irritatedly. Canada is looking better and better by the minute.

Two hours later, he has finally managed to find something to wear, and has moved on to the process of styling his hair. He is mostly ignoring Meyer Wolfsheim in the other room, who is going on about something or another related to the business.  
“Really, my boy, I don’t know where your head is these days,” he vaguely hears Meyer say. “You used to be so sharp, and now here you are avoiding your calls and letting the business fall by the wayside, and I have yet to come up with a reasonable explanation for your behaviour.”  
Jay sighs and, realising the older man probably won’t leave until he contributes to the conversation, pokes his head out of the bathroom. “What about love, Meyer?”  
“Love?” he scoffs. “You never mentioned love.”  
“Look, the timing’s bad, I know,” he concedes. “But, perhaps, if I—”  
Meyer cuts him off. “The timing is not the issue. The whole business with that Dora woman was bad enough—”  
“Daisy,” he corrects absently.  
“—Daisy, whatever, and I would have thought you learned your lesson from it. Men like us aren’t suited for a life of marriage and children, Jay.”  
He has to laugh at that. “Believe me when I say that marriage is not even close to being an issue, Meyer.” He’ll be lucky to not get arrested, never mind being able to marry.  
Meyer continues to talk. Jay abandons the conversation in favour of returning to the mirror, intent on finding out whether he would look better with his hair parted on the right.

Nightfall finds Jay Gatsby in his library, pacing nervously in front of his desk. He hurries over to look out the window every few moments or so and, not yet seeing Nick in the crowd, returns to his restless fidgeting. There are open books scattered across the room on tables, chairs, and one that he notices has landed neatly on top of a lamp after he threw it aside half an hour ago.  
He is well aware that his actions over the past several hours have accomplished absolutely nothing aside from driving himself spare, and yet he can’t seem to keep himself from indulging. He supposes he should at least be grateful that he is only making a mess of his library, and not compulsively spending the annual income of a small island nation in a misguided attempt to impress his neighbour. (He did spend an inordinate amount on the suit, but that is a matter best left between himself and his tailor.)  
His heart leaps into his throat when spots Nick near the pool on the sixty-seventh time he looks out the window. He’ll give it another hour, he decides, and then he’ll go and invite him up personally.  
He later amends that decision on the grounds that forty-five minutes is surely long enough, and if he sits around fiddling with his cufflinks any longer, he’s going to give himself a panic attack.

It doesn’t him take long to find Nick Carraway in the midst of a discussion of some play or other with a group of Broadway actors.  
“Are you enjoying the party, old sport?” Jay asks, tapping him on the shoulder.  
Nick turns to look, and smiles brilliantly at him. “Hello, Jay.”  
It’s now or never, he supposes. “Would you fellows mind terribly if I borrowed Mr Carraway for a moment?”  
“Ah, go on with you, then,” a tall man with curly brown hair says, waving them off. “You’ll come and see the show in September, yes?”  
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Nick assures them, and with that, the two start back to the library.  
“Listen, old sport...” Jay begins hesitantly as they climb the stairs. “Have you heard from Daisy at all recently?”  
He was not expecting explosive laughter as a response. “She had me over for tea the other day. My god, Jay, you should hear her on the subject of you! What on earth did you say to her?”  
He waits until they are safely in the library with the door firmly shut before he explains. “It’s quite a long story, old sport. The short of it is that I’ve thrown her over, I suppose.”  
Nick takes a seat in front of the fireplace, an inscrutable look on his face. “And the long version?”  
Right. Jay clears his throat, begins to pace as he speaks. “About that, old sport...well, you know that we were in love five years ago. And I think I started to realise when we all had tea that day, or rather I suppose it must have started before that, and that afternoon just made it clear to me. I was looking at her, you see, and it occurred to me, old sport, that I had her up on this...” He gestures vaguely, trying to think of the appropriate word. “...this pedestal! Five years of not seeing each other...I suppose I had built up this idea of her in my head, and well,” he sighs. “I think that by that point I was more in love with the idea of her than I was with the reality of her.  
“And then there was...I noticed...” His courage falters, so he goes on with the intention of doubling back at a later time. “Well, I tried to carry on with her, but it just felt wrong, old sport. I thought that maybe, if I could return to some point in the past, I could recover what I felt back then...” He trails off wistfully, then shakes his head. “But I was kidding myself. So I called her up and said I wanted to talk to her, and she invited me over. I thought, you see, it would be kinder to get it over with quickly...I tried to frame it as, you know, I wasn’t good enough for her anyhow and she deserved someone better, and maybe if things had been different, but, well...” He rubs his face, remembering the reaction that had gotten.  
“‘It’s not you, it’s me’?” Nick interrupts incredulously. “No wonder she slapped you!”  
“Yes, well,” he acknowledges.  
“Is this whole thing with Daisy what you were thinking about, then?” Nick notices Jay’s confusion, and elaborates: “When we had lunch, you said you were taking time to think about things.”  
“That’s part of it, old sport,” Jay says slowly, stalling for time. “There were, of course, other considerations...” He would laugh at his plans now, if he could remember any of them. He should have paid someone to sit in the corner and hold up cue cards. At the very least, there ought to be an instruction manual for this sort of thing, he thinks desperately, running a hand through his hair. “I, that is...Old sport...Nick. I wanted to, well, I’ve been meaning to say...”  
“Are you alright, Jay?” Nick approaches him, voice full of concern.  
Jay turns and looks into his eyes, and...he can’t explain it. He grabs Nick by the shoulders, fully intending to reassure his friend that no, really, he has not in fact taken leave of his senses, and he is perfectly fine, old sport, thank you for asking. Only he doesn’t end up saying any of that, or indeed anything at all. Instead, he is surprised to find himself tilting the other man’s head up and pulling him in for a kiss.  
(That is not, of course, to say he’s displeased by this turn of events. He supposes he’s always been better with action than words.)  
He attempts to put everything he can’t say into the kiss — the feelings he can’t ignore, the regret that it took him so long to realise, a plea for his feelings to be returned — and then there is a hand tangled in his hair, and Nick is kissing him back, and he is struck by how right this is. He can do anything, be anyone, he thinks vaguely as he pulls away and looks down at Nick, as long as he has this man by his side...

“You’ll have to pick out a cottage by the sea for us, old sport,” he muses, stroking Nick’s hair fondly.  
Nick responds with a light chuckle. “Picked up on that, did you?”  
“You weren’t very subtle about it,” Jay says apologetically.  
Nick yawns and stretches languorously next to him. “I suppose I ought to be getting back,” he says unconvincingly.  
“Nonsense,” he replies, kissing the other man softly. “Stay.”  
He does.

**Author's Note:**

> So, regarding the end, and the fact that the sex was loudly implied rather than being, well, explicitly spelled out. I was feeling very literary at the time, and I thought it would be more appropriate in this particular piece to write it like I did with the nod to canon than to be like AND THEN JAY AND NICK DID THE DO. Mostly because I didn’t even intend for it to happen when I was outlining it. Oh well.  
> But like, I don't know if you all noticed, but Jay totally says old sport more in canon when he's nervous. And also, he's really not that good at relationships and I have no idea where all this dashing, debonair bullshit in fanfiction comes from. Because, really, he's just...not. At all. He tries, my god does he try, but he just...he fails miserably 99% of the time. I don't know, I felt like it had to be said.  
> I borrowed heavily from canon for some of the dialogue, and some other dialogue came from a musical. I would apologise, but that would imply that I was actually sorry. OH YES, and the name that Meyer called Daisy instead of her name was totally intentional, just in case you were wondering.  
> And finally, this is probably going to be the last piece I post in this series for a while, if ever. I have a brief aside that I wrote for a friend of mine, but I'm probably not going to post it here. It might go up on my Gatsby tumblr [thesociallyawkwardgatsby just for reference] eventually, though.


End file.
